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http://www.newsobserver.com/1185/story/503200.html

Perspectives offered on lacrosse case
Panelists discuss it at Duke event

Anne Blythe, Staff Writer
DURHAM - One panelist spoke of prosecutorial misconduct in the Duke University lacrosse case.

Another railed against the school's faculty and administration for not standing firmly behind the lacrosse players while the judicial process unfolds.

Another described a community that was so fed up with the drunken and rowdy antics of some Duke students that there might have been a rush to judgment without many facts.

On Thursday night, nearly 100 people packed into the Duke Bryan Center to hear three panelists discuss a case that has three lacrosse players awaiting trial on charges of gang-raping an escort service dancer at a team party in March.

Daniel Bowes, president of the ACLU chapter at Duke and the Duke-Durham community liaison, organized the panel discussion.

"This is not meant to be an anti-Nifong event or an anti-lacrosse event," Bowes said. "This is a forum meant to facilitate an honest discussion of various perspectives surrounding the social and legal aspects and repercussions of the Duke lacrosse case."

KC Johnson, a Brooklyn College history professor and author of the Durham-in-Wonderland blog, outlined at least five points where he thought District Attorney Mike Nifong had either violated the N.C. State Bar Rules of Professional Conduct or police procedures.

Larry Holt, a representative from the Durham Human Relations Commission, spoke of a history of off-campus behavior problems that had led the Trinity Park neighborhood to lobby police to aggressively target rowdy Duke student parties.

Stephen Miller, a Duke senior who writes a column for the student newspaper and leads the Conservative Union on campus, was outraged by an ad that ran in the student newspaper last spring signed by many faculty. He described it as a missive in which professors and students had assumed a crime occurred, regardless of the results of the police investigation.

Audience members described the case as one with major legal flaws that had made victims of the accused. One speaker said he wished the administration had stood behind the lacrosse team. Donald Ceres, a Duke divinity school graduate student who grew up in Durham, said he thought the case was polarizing because many in Durham thought of Duke as a walled-off campus of elitists.
Staff writer Anne Blythe can be reached at 932-8741 or ablythe@newsobserver.com.